Be true to you

At a recent visit to a Verizon store, I was greeted enthusiastically by a store employee within a few milliseconds from walking in the door. At any establishment, this beats being ignored. But there was something about the way the greeting was delivered that struck me.

Your goal for each client interaction should reflect your personality and be consistent with the service they can expect from you. It matters less whether it’s enthusiastically friendly or very matter-of-fact. Instead, authenticity matters most. Don’t be someone you’re not. Humans are very good at sniffing out insincerity. And if they sense insincerity, there’s no basis for building trust.

Which brings me back to the Verizon store. I felt the woman who greeted me was friendly enough, but her choice of words and the way they were delivered made me think immediately she was trained to recite from a corporate script. Scripts of course can be helpful to help as a guide for employees, but they’re rarely effective when used verbatim. Train yourself and your staff on the reasoning behind your interactions with clients and then trust their judgement to incorporate that into their conversations. Verizon could have trained a monkey to deliver that greeting. Thankfully, you employ intelligent, empathetic human beings and treat them as such.